F1 News: George Russell Relives His Legendary Mercedes Debut

"It was pretty special"

George Russell has had his first year with Mercedes and has recently looked back at his first drive for the F1 team when he stepped in for Lewis Hamilton at the Sakhir Grand Prix in 2020 when Hamilton was suffering with Covid-19.

In a recently released video with Sky Sports, Russell has taken a look back over his 2020 Sakhir GP race where he started in second behind Valtteri Bottas, who was also driving for Mercedes at the time. 

Russell had a good start and took the lead at turn 1 and very quickly created a gap behind him. The video went on to show how Russell had to rely on the race engineers when the race was under safety car conditions as he was not used to the Mercedes system.

Later on in the race Russell had gone back a few places and went for the overtake of Bottas. Russell acknowledges in the video that he knew Bottas would be one of the hardest to overtake as he was in the same car as him, but he saw an opportunity come up when Bottas ran wide on one of the turns so he just went for it.

He commented:

"That was probably the best overtake I have done in Formula 1. So, yeah, it was pretty special."

Although it looked as though Russell could have taken the win at the Sakhir GP, he suffered from a puncture towards the end of the race and having to pit to replace the tyre took him out of the running of a podium finish. 

This impressive race was clearly a contributing factor to Russell's later contract with the team. He has just finished his first year with Mercedes.

The 2022 season was a tricky one for the team with many car issues. However, Russell managed to be branded as 'Mr Consistency' in the first half of the year after consistently coming in the top five in every race. In the whole season he finished in the top five for 19 out of the 22 races.

The biggest moment for Russell was taking his first career win at the Brazilian Grand Prix where his teammate Lewis Hamilton came second.